When you think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), the last thing on your mind is archives, right? Where in the ever-expanding history of a franchise that started as a joke between Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird does the archives appear and what purpose does it serve? Well, that's where it gets into Your Mileage May Vary territory. While every iteration of the turtles, from their Mirage Comics origins to the present-day Mutant Mayhem movie, emphasizes the chaotic fun of four brothers facing ninjas, aliens, and other mutated creatures, there is an inferred existence of archives and archiving efforts via the team's resident genius: Donatello.
Now, is this going to be a stretch of archival definitions?
Probably.
Am I writing this for the sole purpose of indulging in my love of the TMNT franchise?
100% Almost certainly.
Does this change the fact that archives likely exist within the various TMNT universes or that Donnie will always be the most likely candidate for team archivist?
Not even a little bit.
Good, I'm glad we've cleared that up.
The inspiration behind this article comes from the 2018 animated series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its 2022 movie. The series, while unfortunately short-lived due to botched scheduling and promotion on the part of Nickelodeon as well as toxic fan-boy nostalgia, took a unique approach to the turtles not just in animation style and story beats but also in portraying the varied personalities amongst the brothers and their relationships with each other, their father, Splinter/Hamato Yoshi, and their skills as ninjas.
To get to the point so you don't think I'm just rambling for no reason, in the episode "Clothes Don't Make the Turtle," the boys are searching for the right outfit to wear to an event. After a few montages set to a Prince-inspired tune, they realize they don't remember why they're changing their clothes or what they need to wear them for. As they piece together the events that led up to their 80s montage prison (including an homage to Madonna's "Vogue" music video), they realize they were trapped by Hypno-Potamus (a magician mutant hippopotamus voiced by Rhys Darby) while trying to stop him from stealing Houdini's journals. The key to their escape is the stereo pumping out that sweet legally distinct 80s synth.
One of the ways in which the turtles figure out reality isn't as it seems comes from Donnie. Amazed at how good they look in black tie, Donnie pulls out his camera and says, "I need to archive this for my archives." He snaps a photo only to realize there are other photos he doesn't remember taking.
The episode itself is archival in nature as the boys, and the audience, uncover the events in a non-linear fashion. Like many archival collections, sometimes the narrative makes itself known once the disparate elements come together. It may feel like nothing makes sense, and the gaps are too great to fill in, but there's as much value in the gaps as there is in the filler. Like I said, I'm stretching the idea of "archival" for this article. Just let me have this!
Once we're all caught up to the present, the turtles defeat Hypno when Donnie plays a recording of the same music that trapped them, effectively putting their adversary in the same prison of 80s clothing montages. When Michelangelo asks how Donnie had the music ready to use, this exchange happens:
I'm not kidding that when the archives line was spoken into existence I had a moment where I thought, "Wait, has Donnie been the turtles' archivist the whole time? Does that retroactively make every version of Donatello the de facto archivist of his family/team?"
The short answer:
The long answer is it's about context because when isn't it about context? So, let's backtrack a little and look at why Rise's version of Donatello makes the archivist role a possibility for previous interpretations of the character. The best place to start is with how Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reimagines the turtles and the world they occupy.
For one, Rise carries over the body type and size differences from the 2012 series, which makes sense since series creator Ant Ward was a producer on the previous show that gave the turtles those distinctive silhouettes. The turtles are also different species and vary in age, giving them sibling dynamics informed by their birth order. Raphael (Omar Benson Miller) is an alligator snapping turtle and the oldest at 15 at the start of the series, Leonardo (Ben Schwartz), a red-eared slider, and Donatello (Josh Brener), a softshell, are 14 and dubbed the "disaster twins" by the fandom, and Michelangelo (Brandon Mychal Smith) is a 13-year-old box turtle.
The series also places a greater emphasis on mysticism in addition to ninjitsu, giving the turtles mystic abilities triggered by their new weapons of choice and their personalities. Raph uses tonfas to manifest a massive red avatar to combat larger enemies and take greater hits but also to protect his brothers. Leo uses an ōdachi to create portals that allow him to move swiftly around the battle field. Mikey uses a kusari-fundo that swings around wildly and, at times, has a personality of its own, that matches his energetic and unpredictable movements. And Donnie...
Donnie doesn't have mystic abilities for the majority of the series. Because Donatello is the tech/science genius amongst the brothers, it makes sense that he would be the one turtle less inclined to embrace mysticism and magic because it flies in the face of everything he stands for. Science is about iterations, failure and success that can be recorded and repurposed because it's rooted in fact and reality. Magic, to Donnie, is unknowable in a way that can't be defined and that frustrates him throughout the series.
Instead, Donnie focuses on making his tech as useful, if not more so, than the mystic weaponry his brothers so quickly embraced. And even with the plethora of advanced machinery created, again, by a 14-year-old, he still uses a bō staff as his primary weapon. This one, however, is made of titanium, less likely to break than in previous shows that always stick Donnie with a wooden bō despite all logic dictating he would make something more durable for himself. Donnie's tech and how he perceives his place on the team via his tech is essential to this version of the purple-masked turtle.
Personality-wise Donatello has gone through every version of "nerd" one could conceive. From the "does machines" brainy one of the 80s cartoon to the "has glasses, therefore nerd" of the Michael Bay produced films. Sometimes his only distinctive trait is being the "brains" of the group and other times he's a fully fleshed out character with wants and goals that don't just have to do with being the smart one.
Rise's Donnie is a middle child desperately seeking parental approval while overcompensating with his considerable smarts and technological prowess. He's also sarcastic, narcissistic, touch-averse, hyperfocused, shows low empathy, is kind of a mad scientist, and very autistic-coded, which was confirmed by the show's writers. There are numerous video essays and compilations about the ways in which Donnie's autism is showcased, all of which are more qualified to talk about the subject than I am. Of his many autistic-coded traits, his reliance on tech as a comfort item/coping mechanism and his anxiety around control of his environment and the people around him help contextualize his statements about archiving and recording everything.
Donatello is the most physically vulnerable of the four. He's a softshell turtle and lacks the same support and natural armor of his brothers. To make up for this, Donnie wears a battle shell, tech designed to protect him that also functions as a tool in his lab, a hovercraft, or a means of showing affection to others without having to touch them. Everything about Donnie revolves around using technology as a form of control. So when we get to the archiving of it all, Donnie having a personal archive makes sense because it's another aspect of his need to document his inventions and a means to assert a level of control over his life.
But does snapping a photo and claiming it's for your archives mean that Donnie is applying any curation to said archives or the various stages of his inventions? Well, this is where we have to mostly take it on faith. The episode that sparked this article aired at the end of the second season, right before the finale, so the show runners and writers never got the chance to expand on that aspect of Donnie's role on the team, if they ever planned to at all. However, the majority of the series, and the movie, support the idea of Donnie collecting data and applying it to his work. The running gag of the series about a massive drill Donnie's been working on still being in beta has a fantastic payoff when the turtles finally face Shredder, but it again implies that Donnie has been steadily working and reworking his invention, which would require a certain level of recordkeeping to pull off.
If you've made it this far, then you're probably wondering what the ultimate conclusion is regarding Donnie as an archivist. By all accounts a mostly throw-away line, and two points of data (see above scoffing image), doesn't make for a solid argument. But, like any archivist, I've got to work with what I'm given and the Donatello of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should at least be given a seat at the table if only to roast us for not recognizing the merit of his inclusion.
Can the same be applied to other versions of Donatello throughout the 40-year-old franchise? Probably. If the brains of your team has to keep coming up with new stuff to face increasingly more powerful villains, then you should probably have some way of tracking what works and what doesn't. Then again, they are children and when do children ever do what's logical? Or helpful?
Anyway, thank you for indulging me. Happy Holidays and all that jazz!